The Shining (Archive)

16:24Josh Larsen:Love is a hard word to use for it. I feel manipulated by it in a way I admire. Let me put it that way.

16:29Michael Phillips:Yeah, I kind of love it. Yeah, I was more intrigued than I remember because it's not a film I saw more than once or maybe twice back when I was in college. But it does strike me as awfully minor Kubrick. It does, it does. I don't know why.

16:44Josh Larsen:I think it's minor in terms of what is he really after here. And maybe that's part of what you're getting at in the sense that here's someone who's just playing with a horror story that maybe he's not all that interested in. I do get a sense of that. Yet at the same time, that doesn't mean he set his craftsmanship aside. And so all the intricate care that is going into those tracking shots with the big wheel or even the tour at the beginning, it's all to set up the geography of this hotel. and just to admire the amount of care and attention and how it pays off later when we are running through that hotel too.

17:18Josh Larsen:Now, this time for our lives. And it's very insidious because he's given us so many tours of it with his camera that we think, okay, we should know where to go. We know where is a safe place. But then they start running and it happens early on, which Room 237 nods to where Danny is on his big wheel downstairs. And without explanation, suddenly he's upstairs. Yeah. And suddenly we become disoriented and we're thrown off because we should know this place, but we don't. He's screwing with us again. And there's that's just impossible not to admire.

17:48Adam Kempenaar:I think, though, there is this larger question that we have to ask, which is what is this film about? What do we take away from this film beyond maybe just being scared by it or reflecting on and really admiring the craftsmanship? But one of the things that struck me this time that I certainly didn't notice when I saw it originally back in college for the first time in its entirety was that this really is a film about repression. There is this psychological terror I think Kubrick is exploring that can come from someone repressing themselves, from stifling their natural urges and desires. It actually made me think recently of our discussion of The Master, the Paul Thomas Anderson film.

18:21Adam Kempenaar:I see a little bit of that same kind of broken quality to Jack Torrance as I do in Freddie Quell, someone who's kind of haunted by his inability to be the man slash husband slash father he wants to be or thinks he should be or thinks society expects him to be. And so you think about the ways Jack Torrance is repressing himself. We know he can't drink anymore. And later, he can't wait to get a drink. He says, I think he'd give his soul to have one drink. He's a writer, but he's blocked. He can't say what he wants to say. He can't get that out there. and his relationship with his wife of course is interesting too because they don't seem to be that affectionate they don't seem to be physical in any way with each other and when Ullman is showing them around early on when they're getting the tour originally I love this little throwaway moment where two blonde women attractive blonde women are checking out and they go by and they say goodbye to him and of course Jack's the last guy to go and he has to look back at him watch him go I mean he notices the blonde women and of course he notices the naked blonde woman in room 237 which seems to be this room where maybe you get to explore those desires.

19:24Adam Kempenaar:You get to finally let it all out, whatever you're feeling. And I think that the key part for me is that conversation with Grady, who is the waiter, I think, in the gold room. And the actor, I had to write his name down, Philip Stone. I think he's so good. He is so fun to watch, just really relishing every single line. But when he talks to him later in the film, when Jack is trapped, the phrases he uses are really telling. He talks about how Jack is failing to take care of the problem. Failing. She seems to have gotten the better of you. She needs a good talking to. It's this constant suggestion that he has to assert himself over her.

19:59Adam Kempenaar:And he even says at one point, you don't have to rub it in. So I feel like Jack is this character who feels stifled. He feels like she's largely holding him back. And that's why he really can't abide her than holding his one, his one mistake, his one eruption of violence against him the way he perceives that she does. And that misunderstanding, remember when she says, you did this to him, she thinks that he put his hands on him and choked him. That's really what starts the slide where all the violence in this film comes from.

20:28Josh Larsen:I think that's all there. And maybe this is what you're getting at, Michael. I think it's there on the surface. But for whatever reason, I don't really feel that the movie cares that much about it or is that invested in it. It's there narratively and to add a little bit of context. But I don't know that we can truly say that's what the movie is about. To me, the movie is about its own technique. And I don't know if you're looking for something more. That just seems too shallow, though, doesn't it? I think it might be a pretty shallow movie. A brilliantly done movie, but possibly a shallow one.

20:58Josh Larsen:And I'm not saying that makes it bad, but that's maybe part of my distance from it. And I don't know if that's where your level of engagement is.

21:06Michael Phillips:The wrong – this time through, I thought, okay, what would make this – And I was kind of semi-entranced by a lot of the thing visually, and that's nothing new for Kubrick. But there's something about the match of that director's meticulously, obsessively controlled visual approach when you match that up with an actor as kind of methodically crazy as Nicholson. I mean, there's not a lot of surprise in the Nicholson performance. and I find that any time Nicholson, even more recently, and something is very different, is about Schmidt when he might more profitably play normalcy or sort of a neutrality and then kind of give you the intimations or the ripples of sort of, you know, what's going on behind the facade or whatever.

21:57Michael Phillips:He can't convey that because he doesn't have a lot of that in him. I mean, somebody, I forget who it was, Stephen King suggested, well, it should have been John Voight, you know, like 1980 era John Voight. Somebody who can kind of start here and then go there. But once he got Nicholson in, and it certainly didn't hurt, the film was not a big success at the box office, but it's grown, the reputation, like most of Kubrick's stuff, has grown with the passing years, whatever one thinks of it. Once you get Nicholson in there, he responded to the more operatic approach. I just don't know if the film, to me, is fantastic in those flourishes you mentioned, Josh, just in that image that it comes back to a lot.

22:38Michael Phillips:And I never, without getting lazy, that image of the blood, you know, sort of seeping through these closed elevator doors and then gushing, you know, with the gallons and gallons. There's only, I learned in the making of film that his daughter, Kubrick's daughter, made the documentary that there's really only one actual special effects shot in that film where Nicholson is looking at the model of the maze. And then you see two tiny little characters. Oh, yeah. And that was actually, you know, two stand-ins, real actors, shot from a great height in kind of a recreation of the maze. And they superimposed that.

23:15Michael Phillips:And that was matted in. And that is a genuinely mysterious moment. It really is. Because you think, okay, what's going on? Can he really see them? Is he imagining it? It's like he's the lord of this kingdom. Yeah, I know. But it's not, you don't get a literal explanation.

23:27Josh Larsen:And that's what Kubrick is living for. He lives for that. Right. I'll say this about Nicholson's performance. it's probably the least frightening element to me in the movie. I enjoy it in terms of its comedy, really. Not bad comedy, but just it gets you laughing. And in that way, it maybe releases some tension. But if there was a way for The Shining to be scarier, it might be with a different lead actor. Because then that whole attack the family sequence, which to me, I start to feel like I've seen this. You know, I've seen variations on this. Again, not saying that it's bad or doesn't entirely work, but I wonder if The Shining would have been scarier with someone like John Voight in the lead that took a different tack.

24:04Michael Phillips:This is what Kubrick makes you, even if you feel a little, not dismissive, but more like, okay, it's a minor work in my view. But even so many of his films provoke enormous objections, and you can kind of have objections to your own objections. Like, in other words, Barry Lyndon is a film that I feel like anything, as I say, anything post-2001, I'm not even sure where I stand on all these movies anymore. Barry Lyndon I did see two or three times when it came out. I was sort of just knocked out by it as a period piece. But at the same time, I thought, okay, any actor in the world would be better than Ryan O 'Neill.

24:39Michael Phillips:And I still believe that. That was purely for box office insurance. And he can barely get by, I think, in that picture. And it's too bad that that film didn't have, essentially, more of an Albert Finney-level craftsman in there.

24:52Adam Kempenaar:I guess I don't want to dwell on Nicholson too much more. I think we've covered it. But I do disagree because I think it fits in with how I'm reading the film in terms of this movie and the narrative being one that is preordained and a lot of the dread coming from not just that you know where it's going, but with him being so big and so clearly capable of violence, it then does become this interesting operatic question of, OK, how big is the carnage going to be? How much damage is he really going to do? I agree that it would be interesting to see someone like Jon Voight, someone more subtle, go on more of a progression to that point.

25:24Adam Kempenaar:But I think it works just as well or maybe is even more scary because it is so operatic. And just to close one small thing I was saying about his character and this kind of loser character that he seems to be responding to that line about all work and no play that she reads on the typewriter. If you think about it, though, we've always kind of just joked about it. It's become a cliche. We know it's this nursery rhyme kind of line. But it does work in the grand scheme of this film where he's saying all work and no play makes him a dull boy. This idea that he has to be just a father who has to collect a paycheck, who doesn't get to do the fun things that he wants to do.

26:00Adam Kempenaar:It is an expression of him being stifled in some way. So, again, I'm on board with Nicholson. But I do want to ask you guys about any of the aspects after probably viewing Room 237. As you watch The Shining, did you think about some of those things where you really focused in on some minor detail and maybe obsessed over it or tried to make too much of it?

26:20Josh Larsen:It was hard not to, but I really tried to avoid that, actually, because I didn't want to be caught in that place where the people who are profiled in that documentary are. They're trapped by their theories and interpretations. And we'll get to that film, yeah.

26:30Adam Kempenaar:So, yeah, I tried to avoid that. Well, there were three things that jumped out for me, and the first one is really, really minor. I just thought it was kind of a funny joke where he's in the office with Ullman and he says, well, I've got a writing project that I'm working on. And of course you think, well, I really hope he knows where he's going with this writing project because he's going to be there for five months. So if you're a writer, writing's already hard enough. But if you know where you're going, you have a basic roadmap, that could be very productive. He doesn't have a clue what he's doing.

26:57Adam Kempenaar:And I love the fact that he says he's got this writing project. And then what we learned is he didn't have a story. And Ullman says, well, I've got this little story for you. And it's the story about the Grady's and what went wrong there. And you almost have to think, if only Torrance had been smart enough to go, well, that's an interesting story. Why don't I write about that? Just written it, not lived it. Yeah, exactly. Then he'd have something. But I love the fact you mentioned, Michael, Danny eating the Wonder Bread, Shelley Duvall smoking as they're watching TV. They're eating lunch there in that opening sequence, the first time we meet Danny and Wendy.

27:28Adam Kempenaar:Do you remember what else Wendy is doing in that scene as she's smoking a cigarette and talking to Danny?

27:32Michael Phillips:She's wearing her watch over the red pullover, which looks like halfway to psychotic right there. But no, what is it?

27:42Adam Kempenaar:What I noticed was she's reading a book. She's reading a book, and it happens to be Catcher in the Rye. And I just love the fact that she's married to a writer or an aspiring writer, and she's a reader. She's clearly a reader because what we also see in the shot is behind Danny is a bookshelf full of books. They're everywhere. So keeping with my theory about this pressure on him to be this certain kind of husband or man, she's a reader and he's a writer. And it also works nicely that it's Catcher in the Rye written by a recluse, a guy who basically shut himself in. Right. You have to wonder if maybe Kubrick was.

28:17Michael Phillips:Adam, you're like the sixth guy that didn't make the final cut. Why wasn't I in the film? I know he really should have. Here's my last one, though. It keeps going.

28:24Adam Kempenaar:You can totally scoff at this one. But think about why does Kubrick spend so much time showing Scatman Crothers, Dick Halloran, the chef, show Wendy all the food in the freezer? He spends like five minutes going through the number of ribeyes, all the different types of meat that are in the freezer. And I watch it and I was thinking, I think a lot of people wonder this as you watch The Shining. What is all that blood in the elevator? What is it supposed to symbolize in some way? And I'm thinking about all the animals that must have been slaughtered, right? So they had a slaughterhouse in the basement is what you're saying?

28:56Adam Kempenaar:No, not necessarily, but I wonder if there is a little bit of visual playfulness going on or textual playfulness on Cubic's part to suggest that. Think about the number of animals. Forget the Indians that they've clearly, the people who built that territory slaughtered, but then the people they've dug up the bones to build the hotel on that burial ground. But then we've got the animals as well. The sheer quantity of animals that have to be slaughtered to keep that place running. That's the blood of the elevator.

29:20Michael Phillips:I just assumed it was some of those early New Year's Eve parties in the 20s that got a little out of hand.

29:25Adam Kempenaar:Maybe so. The guy with the rabbit suit we see later, yeah. What about then any major aspects of the film? We've covered a few of them. But what about things that maybe clearly didn't work for you beyond Nicholson's performance? Were there aspects of the film that didn't?

29:37Michael Phillips:I think a lot of it is hooked up for me with questions about the casting of Nicholson and Duvall, frankly. Although, right, these days, of course, whatever one thinks of that movie, their faces in extremis either reacting to or causing some horrifying moment of, you know, it's part and parcel of the movie's image. And it's why we kind of rolls around in our heads, even if we don't really know what we make of it. I guess I find Kubrick's not, I wouldn't say sending up the material, but he. It comes close sometimes. He looks, he's not interested in, you know, but what is Eyes Wide Shut? Is that a conventional, you know, adherence to any genre?

30:22Michael Phillips:Certainly not. I got a huge issue with Eyes Wide Shut that I'm eager to revisit in a few years when I see it again, or maybe sooner, in that I think that story, not necessarily with those actors, but that story came from a different period. I think it would have made more sense in a different period. I don't know. I just always have these enormous questions with Kubrick in the later stuff about either casting or some decision. But at the same time, you have to admire how damn far he went with every single choice, often in the direction he always went. But, I mean, when you look at the visual quality of The Shining, you have to go straight back to the trenches in Paths of Glory.

31:00Michael Phillips:He was doing amazing things in 1957 with the camera. Never a subtle filmmaker in many ways. He didn't view humanity or humans in extremis under attack in any particularly subtle way. But he somehow turned these simple parables of good and evil into the stuff of, if not necessarily nightmares, but stuff of the kind of very unsettling dreams. And that's why he's still the filmmaker he is.

31:33Josh Larsen:I don't have any major criticisms for The Shining, but with your interpretive skills we've seen on display here, I do want you to explore why do we get so much of Dick Halloran traveling to the hotel? It's one of my notes. We get him in Miami. We get him on the plane. We get him in the car. I'm surprised if there were computers around, we would have gotten him placing his order on Xperia for his plane tickets.

31:55Adam Kempenaar:You're so right. It's one of my notes. That's one of the things I didn't understand about the movie.

31:59Michael Phillips:It's absurd.

32:00Adam Kempenaar:It's just misdirection. It doesn't really detract from the film, but you're right. It's interesting that they show so, and you wonder maybe if he is trying to make, maybe he's trying to make a sort of ironic joke out of it because how much time does he devote to seeing Scatman Crothers get to the Overlook and then once he gets there, he's killed in 30 seconds. It clearly seems to be a joke on his part, but you're right. I don't know why we had to spend that much time with him. The two things for me, and I'll just quote you directly from my notes as I watch the film, WTF the dog. The dog. Do you remember the sequence when Wendy is losing her mind and she finally sees the blood come out of the elevator?

32:35Adam Kempenaar:This is at the end of the film. Danny's being chased by Jack through the maze. She's looking for them in the overlook. And she goes upstairs and there's a sequence where a character in a dog outfit is getting it on. That's the rabbit man I was talking about. It's a dog. He's in a rabbit outfit, isn't he? I think it's a dog because I did some Google searching today to be like, there must be something on this. Apparently it's in the book. Okay. And it was something Kubrick shot but otherwise didn't explain it at all. except for that one shot where we see a dog seemingly performing a sex act on a man in a hotel room.

33:04Adam Kempenaar:That's one of those subliminal things I'm talking about. Yeah, but that's one of those things that completely doesn't fit in with anything else we see in the movie. And I think that whole sequence with Wendy doesn't really work where things, we see the cobwebs, it kind of becomes a little bit too conventionally horror movie there for me. Yeah, that's a joke shot right there with the rest of the film.

33:22Michael Phillips:It's weird because a lot of it almost seems David Lynchian. And he was, by then, Lynch had made Eraserhead, and I think The Elephant Man came out that same year. But Kubrick's kind of, the kind of rhythm he favors as a filmmaker and the kind of anal attention to certain pacing and this methodical vibe, he's always kind of sort of like hum, hum, you know, playing out. It's the opposite of the kind of really free-floating dream imagery that Lynch is into. So when you get a moment like that in The Shining, where you have this sort of, you know, Deval kind of coming upon this salacious sexual act going on, it doesn't seem to be coming out of any kind of like subconscious or dream moment.

34:05Michael Phillips:No, you're right. It's laid out with this kind of ridiculously heavy hand. Very matter of fact, you're right. And at the same time, it's all part and parcel of Kubrick just as a filmmaker. No, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Where do you, I want to ask this though. Where do you put it in relation to the film's, it's nearest on the timeline? We have Barry Lyndon and we have a full metal jacket on the other side. Where does that go for you?

34:29Josh Larsen:Wow. I've never seen Barry Lyndon, so I can't put it. I haven't either, tragically. I mean, overall, on Kubrick's filmography. I'm sorry, I'm leaving. You should. You should. I don't, I mean, I would put it at the top, but for different reasons. And the films that I value more, like 2001, would be way above it. If that makes any sense.

34:47Adam Kempenaar:I don't know. Get back to me in bonus content. I'll have thought about it a little bit more in terms of where I rank this. I do want to mention one last thing, though, that I'm curious how you guys responded to, which is something that I don't even know if I'm saying it as a criticism. It's more just an open question I have about the film, which is I don't know how I feel about the fact that a major aspect of the plot revolves around Grady, a character who clearly doesn't quote unquote really exist, letting Jack out of the storage room in the basement of the Overlook Hotel. Because if you think about how the film is set up, obviously you have to buy in a little bit to supernatural things going on.

35:20Adam Kempenaar:Clearly, Danny has the shining and Scatman Crothers has this ability to shine. You buy that. You also can buy very easily that everything that is going on in Jack's head is going on in his head. He's walking around the hotel. He thinks he's meeting these characters, but they're not, quote unquote, really there. Well, is that really all that cut and dry? No, I don't think it is, but I think you can go with it. If you want to just suspend disbelief so far, you can say, OK, I get that certain characters have supernatural abilities. I get that this place is haunted.

35:48Josh Larsen:So who brews Danny in room 237?

35:49Adam Kempenaar:Well, exactly. You're right. So that's one of the things that comes up. And the other one would be him getting let out is just it takes it to a plane where a film is already clearly bizarre and out there and supernatural. It takes it to another level where then these ghosts in this house, it's not just haunted or it's not just a place that that preys on your fragile mind. It can actually cause physical things to happen in the real world, like a ghostly character opening.

36:15Josh Larsen:Yeah, I thought that worked well, actually. Yeah, it elevated things.

36:17Adam Kempenaar:It's just not completely in keeping, maybe, with the rest of the film. Adam, why are you so literal-minded? I don't understand what... It's a curse. It's part of my fragile mind, unfortunately, Michael. Mom? Yeah? Do you really want to go and live in that hotel for the winter? Sure I do. It'll be a lot of fun. Yeah, I guess so. Good timing, too, as we recently talked about Jack Nicholson and shared our top five Jack Nicholson scenes. We hope you enjoyed that dip into the Film Spotting Archive, a reminder that archive access is just one of the many benefits you get by being a Film Spotting family member.

37:00Adam Kempenaar:And you can learn more at FilmSpottingFamily.com. Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

37:24Adam Kempenaar:FilmSpotting is listener supported. Join the FilmSpotting family at FilmSpottingFamily.com and get access to ad-free episodes, monthly bonus shows, our weekly newsletter, and for the first time all in one place, the entire FilmSpotting archive going back to 2005. That's at FilmSpottingFamily.com. Panoply.

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